Path: montebello!joe
Newsgroups: sci.geo.meteorology,rec.boats.paddle
Distribution: world
Followup-To:
References: <9209150137.AA01329@montebello.soest.hawaii.edu> <1992Sep19.053834.13420@news.Hawaii.Edu>
From: joe@montebello.soest.hawaii.edu (Joe Dellinger)
Reply-To: joe@montebello.soest.hawaii.edu
Organization: School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology
Subject: Kayaking the beautiful Na Pali coast of Kauai
Keywords:
While we were watching the hurricane making its beeline towards Kauai
on the satellite monitors, it occurred to someone... Wait a minute!
Weren't there some people from the department who were supposed to
be kayaking Kauai's (remote, rugged, beautiful) Na Pali coast this
weekend? Are they already there...? Nobody was quite sure. Did they have
a radio with them? Probably not. Did they know what disaster was about
to befall them?
NO, THEY DIDN'T!!!!!
I suppose in retrospect we should have tried calling somebody
on Kauai, given their names, and made sure they got evacuated... but
we weren't completely sure they were even there. Was there any central
location that would keep track of the names, checking people off a list
as various local volunteers got them out? Uh... probably not. Who would
we call anyway? We didn't have a clue.
I left this little bit out of my earlier Iniki narrative because
when I wrote it we still had no idea what had happened to them... Well
happily they (eventually) got back OK, and I talked them into writing up
THEIR story, and letting me post it.
So here is the saga of "Kayaking the beautiful and remote Na Pali
coast of Kauai, while unawares a Class IV hurricane is bearing down on you",
as experienced by a UH person (who wishes to remain anonymous):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> It was going to be my 30th birthday so my friend and I decided
> to get out of Honolulu and do a kayak trip on the Na Pali coast. We
> arrived in Hanalei wednesday evening and camped in a banana grove
> behind Kayak Kauai, just us and 8 million mosquitoes. We took off
> early the next morning, thursday; the seas were calm, the sun was shining,
> and we were looking forward to 5 days of leisurely westward paddling
> beneath the cliffs of the Pali. Our first night was to be in the famous
> Kalalau valley, the magnificent beach that awaits the tired hiker or
> kayaker at the end of the 12 mile Na Pali trail. After that we were planning
> to push westward to Miloli'i, another magnificent valley in the Pali
> coast that is accessible only by boat. We would stay 2 nights there
> and then do the final stretch to Polihale, the beach at the extreme
> western end of the Pali.
>
> Well, we had a great day kayaking on thursday, nothing exceptional
> in the weather that would ever give us a hint that a hurricane was imminent.
> We had heard there was a hurricane about 400 miles south of Hawaii, but that
> it would pass by without any major effects on us (which is a common enough
> occurrence here in Hawaii). We explored the sea caves all along the way,
> venturing into some of them, awestruck by the resounding echoes of the
> water pounding on the walls. We made it to Kalalau around five in the
> afternoon, and the swell was quite small, just 2 to 3 foot waves. I've
> been there at other times when the waves are up to 8 to 10 feet. The sky
> was clear, except for some occasional clouds on the horizon. Again,
> we didn't have much cause to expect that a hurricane was coming our way.
> That evening as we were sitting outside making dinner, some clouds began
> to roll in and there was lightning. Now the lightning really surprised
> me; I hadn't seen that very often here in Hawaii. No sign of rain though.
> The sky seemed clear enough to sleep outside, so we did until 3 in the
> morning when it began to rain. We moved from the beach to the tent
> (which was protected inside some trees) and the rain continued
> on and off for the rest of the night. At 7:30 in the morning we heard
> a plane make a low pass over the beach, and then we heard a helicopter
> land nearby. We assumed that it was the park service coming in to do some
> work, because we heard several landings and takeoffs. We pretty much
> ignored the noise and went back to sleep, although we were a bit annoyed
> at the interruption of our peaceful morning. Well this helicopter noise
> continued for an hour and a half and we kept ignoring it until finally
> what seemed like the final takeoff and I got up to make some tea. When I
> walked over to the beach, two men were standing in a clearing about 50 yards
> away. One of them freaked out when he saw me and said something like
> "oh my god there's another one". He looked rather official, and I
> couldn't imagine what was going on. He frantically
> gestured for me to come over, which I did, and he said, "grab your
> friend and your valuables, there's a hurricane coming, and you have two
> minutes until we take off". I immediately ran back to get my friend,
> who was unfortunately in the outhouse at the time, and I had to do
> my best to convince him to get off the pot as quickly as possible and
> no this wasn't a joke to make him look stupid. We ran and got the kayaks
> and pulled them under the trees next to the tent (didn't even think about
> tying them up) and threw all our gear into the tent. I grabbed my camera
> and another dry bag that I thought had my wallet in it. Unfortunately I
> realized later that I had grabbed the wrong bag. No wallet. Thus all
> my money, credit cards, driver's license and traveler's checks are
> probably floating around the Pacific somewhere. Anyway, we were frantic,
> and I ended up grabbing stupid things, like the empty stuff sack for my
> sleeping bag. All I had on was my bathing suit top and my sarong; I didn't
> even think to save my real shoes (I was wearing thongs). And sure enough,
> before we even had time to breathe, the helicopter returned and we had to
> depart. Everything in our camp was still rather badly strewn about.
> Incredible but there were just two seats left for my friend and I. This
> was the last helicopter that could rescue people, the weather was starting
> to get really strange. And we got THE LAST two seats on THE LAST helicopter.
> Hmmm. If we had dallied in the tent just five more minutes we wouldn't
> have had a clue what was about to come down on our heads. . .
>
> I don't know much about how air masses move, but the helicopter ride
> was very bumpy. We hit quite a few air pockets and we were being shoved
> from side to side the whole way. (By the way, this wasn't a coast guard
> helicopter. It was a chopper from Papillon sightseeing tours and the guy
> who had frantically gestured to me earlier was just a nice guy who worked
> for Papillon who realized that somebody should rescue all the unsuspecting
> hikers and kayakers who wouldn't have a clue about the hurricane. They
> airlifted 69 people off the entire Na Pali coast from Miloli'i to Haena
> during that hour and a half when I was so intent on ignoring the noise).
> The sky was an eerie slate grey color and the clouds were very high up. It
> rained very lightly. At the heliport at Princeville everyone was busy
> taping X's on the windows and glass doors and taking apart the helicopters
> to put in the hangar. (An aside: unfortunately the supposedly hurricane-
> proof hangar wasn't so hurricane proof and all the helicopters were
> smashed by the hangar's collapse except for the one that was left outside
> cause it wouldn't fit inside.)
>
> We were taken to the Princeville Hotel which was acting as a
> shelter for the hurricane. It was around 10:30 am and there were mobs of
> people already there, camped out on the ballroom floor (the ballroom was
> pink). We took our complimentary blanket, sheets, and pillows and wandered
> to the second floor where we set ourselves up in another pink ballroom. We
> wandered about the lobby after that, a lobby with floor-to-ceiling glass
> walls and glass skylights. I didn't feel too confident about its ability
> to withstand hurricane winds. The hurricane was upgraded to a class V,
> one class higher than Andrew in Florida, and it was headed right for us.
> All kinds of people were wandering about, from well-dressed, confused-
> looking guests of the $200/night hotel, to Kalalau backpackers who hadn't
> washed in week, to locals from Hanalei, to groovy hippies from Princeville.
> The hotel staff were rolling up expensive carpets, moving furniture from
> under the skylights, and the whole atmosphere was quite bizarre and I
> was strongly reminded of Bob Dylan's song "Black Diamond Bay" (where was
> the woman with the necktie and the Panama hat?). We still had several
> hours until the serious winds were supposed to begin. And at noon you
> had your choice of food, either free food from the Red Cross or pay $20
> for an all-you-can-eat buffet at the hotel restaurant. The lines seemed
> pretty evenly split between the two. By 1:30 the restaurant had closed,
> the winds began to pick up, and the lobby with the glass windows was off
> limits. The electricity was off and a few lights were lit by emergency
> generator. By 2:00, you could tell something serious was happening. We
> heard rumors that Oahu was already getting it really hard and I had
> visions of my house in Honolulu, which is rather unsteadily perched on
> stilts on a steep hill, collapsing and eliminating all my life's possessions.
> I situated myself on a balcony which was protected, but yet still afforded
> a view out the lobby windows. I metered the progress of the hurricane
> by how bent over the small palm tree immediately outside the window was
> getting. By 4:00 you could hear big crashes and bangs as things flew
> around outside and smashed up against the building. I could feel the
> pressure changes in my ear as a particularly strong gust would blow (already
> some windows were broken). By 4:30, big big crashes as the lobby door
> blew open and a big floor-to-ceiling window shattered into a million pieces.
> Then the eye. We must not have been directly under the eye because I never
> did sense complete calm. The wind still seemed to be blowing. But then
> when the wind reversal occurred, all hell broke loose. More shattering
> of windows and skylights, monstrous booming sounds from the roof, and then
> the ceiling caved in behind me and a wall of water came pouring down.
> Panic ensued. People were screaming because the ceiling had caved in just
> over the staircase, which seemed to be our only escape route. We had no
> idea how much more of that ceiling was about to collapse. And then out of
> nowhere came some of the hotel staff (awesome staff if I may say so) and
> they directed us to some back staircase through an emergency exit at the
> back of the pink ballroom. They led everyone out single file and we
> exited the building. We walked around the front of the building, holding
> on to whatever we could and watched things (like trees) fly through the air.
> We were led into another door into a concrete hallway and that is where we
> ended up spending the rest of the hurricane. No more view except through
> a tiny porthole in the door. It was very depressing. That was when the
> full weight of the significance of my rescue from Kalalau beach set in.
> I tried not to think about my house on Oahu (and needless worry it would
> have been, since Oahu was hardly hit at all!). We waited out the rest of
> the hurricane with little excitement. When it was finally over, around
> 9 pm, we went outside to check out the damage. It was awesome. Trees
> uprooted everywhere, huge sections of the roof spread all around the
> grounds, ceiling tile wrapped around elegant statues in flooded fountains,
> smashed cars, and the almost-full moon was trying to poke through. The
> damage, against the background of this hotel's former elegance, seemed an
> awesome contrast.
>
> The next day, my birthday, dawned beautiful and sunny. The rest
> of the story is somewhat boring. No water, no electricity, no telephone,
> no way to let people know we were safe. Six hundred homeless in the
> hotel and no way to flush the toilet. A japanese tourist couple posed
> for a picture in front of their condo that had lost its roof and three
> walls. The town of Hanalei demolished. A money safe from the grocery store
> was lying in the middle of the road (apparently when the roof of the store
> blew off, a couple of guys broke in in the midst of the hurricane, stole
> the safe, but got it entagled in some wires and abandoned it). Kayak
> Kauai no longer displayed even the slightest hint of the banana grove that
> we once had camped in. It had vanished. The building itself was a shell,
> just a roof and one wall. The stuff we had left behind for safekeeping was
> still there, under a section of one wall. I ended up losing
> about $800 worth of camping gear, but the Na Pali coast lost a lot more.
> I heard that 1000 years worth of erosion had occurred on that coast in
> that one day (could that be true?). The trail is wiped out. Lots of
> landslides. The saga continued for 3 more days as we were trapped in Hanalei
> with no contact with the outside world, but I will leave you here and spare
> you the boring details. When we were helping to clear the road of fallen
> trees a local guy gave me the Hawaiian hang loose hand signal and said
> "GOOD TO BE ALIVE". I couldn't agree more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, hope you enjoyed that exciting true-life Hawaii adventure.
Makes my own experiences on Oahu seem downright boring, which I'm _quite glad_
of. Thanks very much to the anonymous person for consenting to letting me
post this!
/\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________
/ \ / \ /Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, Honolulu\/\/\.-.-....__
___/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger, Internet: joe@montebello.soest.hawaii.edu\/\.-.__